A Great Year For Gun Control

Urban Affairs

For gun control, call it a banner year. Maryland has just passed Ameri-ca's first trigger lock "smart gun" law, with President Clinton traveling to Annapolis to see Gov. Parris Glendening sign it.

Massachusetts has cleared legal barriers to applying consumer safety laws to guns, just like toasters and autos.

Following the Columbine tragedy, California expanded its assault weapons ban and started requiring trigger locks on all guns sold. Missouri voters stunned the gun lobby by rejecting a referendum to allow concealed firearms. To escape a barrage of suits by local, state and federal governments, Smith & Wesson, the nation's biggest gunmaker, agreed to gun safety and dealer responsibility standards.

Voter initiatives are pending in Colorado and Oregon to close the gun show loophole by which unlicensed dealers aren't required to make background checks on buyers. And conservative governors are starting to switch. Latest example: New York's George Pataki. He now wants a ban on assault weapons, mandatory background checks at gun shows, child safety locks on guns and a ballistic fingerprint of new guns so their owners can be traced.

So are we at an historic break point? Are the states, closer to the people and the families ravaged by America's daily toll of some 85 firearm fatalities, ready to assume gun reform leadership? Can they, will they, fill the void left by a Congress apparently still beholden to the gun lobby?

Maybe so. Voters are impatient and "don't care who does it - just keep guns out of their kid's school," CNN commentator William Schneider tells Stateline News Service.

But let's not be fooled. In a political world that lets money rule supreme, the National Rifle Association and its allies are a continuing, feared force. And not just in Congress, but also - sometimes especially - in state legislatures.

Even in 1999, year of the Columbine High School carnage, 14 states passed NRA-backed bills to pre- empt home rule and forbid cities and counties from filing damage suits against gunmakers whose products are used to terrorize their streets. The 14 included Pennsylvania and Arizona, not to mention Texas and Tennessee - home states of our leading presidential contenders.

And now comes a study from the New York-based Open Society Institute, backed by financier George Soros, which shows that most states, far from having the scads of unenforced firearms statutes that the gun lobby claims, actually have pitifully few control laws.

* Thirty-five states have neither registration nor licensing of any type of gun. Only Massachusetts, among the 50, now requires both registration and licensing. Yet with a third of the guns used in crimes bought less than three years before the offense, registration/licensing might make a big difference.

* Only two states - California and Connecticut - have banned private sale of assault weapons, ideal for mass homicides.

* Thirty-one states have no waiting period on handgun purchases.

* Eighteen states have no minimum age for possession of a rifle or shotgun. In North Carolina, says the study, a 12-year-old needs parental permission to play Little League baseball, but not to own a rifle.

* Six states have no minimum age for a child to possess a handgun, notwithstanding outrages of gun- toting first-graders.

* Forty-six states have no limit on how many guns a buyer can purchase at once - what a break for gun runners!

* Making mincemeat of home rule, 40 states specifically forbid localities to enact laws controlling gun sale or use.

All in all, the Open Society charges, 42 states lack even "basic gun control laws" and "fall below the minimum standards for public safety." Only five - Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, Connecticut and Maryland - score at 40 percent or more on the Institute's scale of 30 weighted gun control measures.

The Open Society links weak gun laws to our heavy home armaments and homicide rates two to 10 times that of other developed nations.

But would strong laws change things? Isn't it true that crime is higher in some states with tougher laws, lower in some with soft laws? State Sen. Vinton Cassidy, in Maine, a state with virtually zero gun restraints and high numbers of gun owners, says new laws would only "threaten the hunting traditions of Maine and waste the taxpayers' dollars."

So let's be honest: In today's complex world, gun laws are just one factor in the crime/suicide/violence equation. Families, values, policing, criminal penalties matter too.

But for the minor inconvenience of licensing and registering guns, adding gun safety features and then forbidding use by youth and unbalanced individuals, we'd surely save several thousand lives and avert as many searing family tragedies each year.